


Hanging By A Thread

by Anonymous



Category: Chronicle (2012)
Genre: Amorality, Boredom, Catholic Guilt, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Incest, Infatuation, M/M, Masturbation, Pining, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 23:06:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9262715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Matt Garetty has an affliction. One that tastes bitter in his mouth and elicits the warmth that pools in his stomach.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Nothing But Thieves' 'Hanging'

It was a downing Monday afternoon and nothing seemed to decrease the attention of seventeen year old Matt Garetty like repetitional conversations. The droning, mock-loving voice of his mother drove him quickly up the the stairs of his Catholic home, ignoring the dull gold of crosses nailed to the walls of his living room. He was bored. Unconventionally, annoyingly bored with everyone and everything around him. And to make it even worse, he was agitated as well. It was such a sticky, sweaty feeling. He might have turned down the simple, unassuming text from Andrew Detmer if he had had the ability to be alone and not single-handedly destroy everything he loved, including himself, without remorse. 

The text said, ‘’Are you busy?’’ 

He could have ignored it. He could have continued walking up the stairs and shoved the cracked screen of his cellphone into his back pocket, ignoring the wave-like present of his cousin. But he did not. And it happened to be one of the most detrimental mistakes of his life. ‘’No, why?’’ he had texted back, not thinking over the consequences of not being busy on a Monday. He stomped up the stairs after slipping his poor, broken phone back into his hoodie pocket. He was tired, uncomfortable and done. 

Upon entering his cluttered, warm room, he flopped down onto his unmade bed and stared up at the ceiling. He noted the white speckles seemingly glued up there, and ignored the boring thud of his heart in his chest. Life moved very slowly, and he considered it slowing down every time he thought about it doing just that. The universe seemed to spite him in that vulnerable, delusional way. He was agitated and unnerved and painfully unsatisfied. Upon yanking his phone from his pocket and unlocking it, he had a single, unknowingly incriminating text from Andrew. ‘’Can I come over?’’ 

‘’I guess,’’ he typed back dubiously, not entirely set on being alone or being in company. 

And then the phone was thrown off the bed childishly, colliding with the white wall of his bedroom and emitting a flinch-worthy crack as the impact sounded. Matt couldn’t feel anything but a distant annoyance at the assumedly shattered screen and a brief worry at the idea of explaining the entire thing to his mother. Then, unfortunately, it ended. The quick flash of any semblance of emotion made him feel like he was still human, but his boredom was sucking him dry. And not in a fun way, so don’t ask. 

It wasn’t often that Matt felt this way, but when it happened, it made him incredibly destructive. It was like he had never felt bliss before, and was suspended in a constant state of agitation, despite the logical half of his brain insisting that he’d feel happiness - or more appropriately, pleasure - again. He had a backpack filled with homework to entertain him and a wide range of video games splayed across his floor, but that wasn’t what he was looking for. He wanted something that would stir the excitement in his stomach and rile him up in that pathetic, whining sort of way. 

There was no way to know that he’d hate himself later on for that wish.   
Matt closed his eyes, settling into the springy, uncomfortable expanse of his mattress. The agitation seemed to bloom beneath his skin as his phone went off again. It was a gentle, almost-strangled ‘chirp’ from across the room that made him ball his hands into fists and groan pathetically in the back of his throat. He wouldn’t answer it. He didn’t care in the least. He turned over onto his stomach and ignored the way his clothes clung to to his sweaty, hypersensitive skin. He was livid as he fell asleep. 

\--

A curious, seeking hand was pressed to his shoulder, shaking him awake. It wouldn’t be incorrect to say that his eyes snapped open, suspecting the infuriatingly calm presence of his mother. Instead, with his knees pressed into the mattress, Andrew Detmer leaned over and looked down at him placidly. Matt noticed the oversized jacket hanging off his shoulder on one side and pushed it from his mind, ignoring the intrusive idea of a small shoulder bowing into a hollow, slim collar bone. He swallowed. 

‘’Hey,’’ he said hoarsely, slipping from Andrew’s touch as he pushed himself upwards. He moved and took a wobbly seat on the very edge of his bed, blinking the sleep from his vision as he stared forward at his cousin. ‘’Uh, I didn’t know you were coming over?’’ 

Andrew had the nerve to flush bright red, ‘’I… I asked you. You said yes.’’ 

Matt rubbed his hand across his face, attempting to wake himself up. ‘’No, I said I guessed you could.’’ 

‘’If you know what you said, then how did you not know I was coming over?’’ the smaller boy questioned, shoving three or four pillows out of the way so that he could take an entitled seat with his back pressed to the headboard of Matt’s bed. 

Matt had to suppress the urge to grind his teeth, ‘’I don’t know.’’ 

He knew. 

\-- 

Somehow, Matt ended up on his bedroom floor, leaning against the wall and attempting to will his irrational anger down. He had his eyes trained on Andrew, who was babbling like a child as he stared up at the ceiling, laid out in full across Matt’s unwashed sheets. ‘’Buh buh buh, uh uh uh uh, do you know the song? Like buh buh buh, uh uh uh uh. Matt. Matt. Do you know it? Buh buh buh?’’ 

‘’It’s… uh… the Travago theme song, I think,’’ he replied, forcing himself to be compliant. Andrew’s bony hands shot up in the air, and despite not looking in the same direction, finger gunned him down. 

Matt supposed that counted as acknowledgement. 

He didn’t necessarily appreciate Andrew’s presence, but it was a muted one at least. The other boy had no qualms about taking up Matt’s time, so there was nothing really to be done about it. It was merely tolerated in the ramble-filled space, where annoyance bubbled up in suffocating bouts and his baby cousin didn’t realize how mind boggling he was. He tempted the devilious urges within Matt while doing third quarter backbends, gurgling incessant laughter and pleading him to watch. 

And then Andrew was bouncing onto his stomach, still begging for attention. The bare sunlight filtered through parted curtains, slipping down onto milky skin and cutting out the curve of Andrew’s edge-like face. In that moment, he was wet lips and wide, blinking eyes and the illumination of seventeen years spent pining. Matt swallowed it all down with a stretched, metaphorical mouth and let himself choke on it. They were staring at each other, and it was so simple, yet infuriatingly complex. 

‘’Remember that time you got your hand stuck in a pumpkin?’’ Andrew asked, the corner of his mouth tugging up into a smile. 

Matt took a stuttering breath inwards, his eyebrows furrowing in realization and fondness and guilt. ‘’I do,’’ he said, his smile trying its best to be sincere as his heart threatened to bound out of his chest. It was beating so quickly, sputtering like an old engine inside of him, eliciting that painful kind of energy from him and suspending him in cardiac arrest. The lawful, budding part of his brain insisted that the only arrest he was going to experience was one that would put him behind bars; assumedly for wanting to both strangle Andrew Detmer and wreck him until he lost that awful, broken voice of his. 

As if shocked by his own thoughts, Matt sat up straighter. He pulled his shoulders back, attempted to even out his breathing and ignore the heart-shaped lips curled in awe. ‘’Someone’s head got stuck in a pumpkin once, I think,’’ Andrew continued, redirecting his gaze from Matt’s face to the hands that rested on his lap. ‘’But you… you refuse to commit.’’ 

‘’Refuse to get my head stuck in a pumpkin, you mean?’’ Matt corrected with a voice that almost gave him away. There was something vulnerable and raw hiding in his throat, willing to give away everything he had just to kiss the other boy once. It would be smothering, unreciprocated and wrong but Matt was entirely sure that it would keep him on edge for the rest of his life. He would forever be running from the cops and diverting his gaze away from the priest in church but fuck, he wanted it. 

Bad. So bad. 

Andrew’s laugh was a childish giggle above the pressure in Matt’s chest. He blinked slowly, his gaze glassing over as he noted the way the eyelashes gathered around the corners of his cousin’s icy blue eyes. They were dark and long, blinking prettily in the late afternoon haze. He wasn’t even sure it was pretty. 

It could have been anything. Normal, maybe. But Matt was out of adjectives. 

He breathed shakily, watching Andrew’s fingers pick at the threads loose in his old sheets. He looked incredibly young then… With a sentimental smile resting in its smallest form on his face. He remembered their sleepovers from childhood, when watching him sleep became more hobby-like than a casual study of his soft face. They didn’t really do sleepovers anymore. They were too old or disinterested or bored with each other. Matt couldn’t empathize with any of those feelings then. 

He was seventeen, interested and engaged. But Andrew wouldn't ever be. 

Matt left that realization to fester beneath his skin as he observed his cousin, taking in as much as he could for later on, when nobody was around to decide on whether or not he was wrong. 

\-- 

The darkness swallowed him whole, savoring the salty aftertaste of his skin and bones. Matt couldn’t breathe, but he could think. It seemed to be the only thing he could do, even as he suffocated with his hair plastered to his forehead and his mouth struggling to stay open. Sometimes, pleasure felt like sandpaper and he liked it that way. He liked when it burned his palms and forced him to take it, even when the moans rose broken and incoherent in his throat.

It was hard to mute the name that rolled off his tongue so easily. He gnashed his teeth together, trying to keep the praises inside his dry, empty mouth. The spring in his mattress groaned as he rocked incessantly, sweat dripping off of him and rolling down over sensitive skin. All for the sake of the image he pictured. 

The image, sinuous and sultry, was more like a movie scene. Andrew appeared - front and center - on his bruised knees, mouth open, those baby blues wide, and then he was gone. The scene changed rapidly, and he found Andrew on his back, lithe and spread wide for consumption. A strangled moan left Matt’s mouth, echoing painfully in his messy bedroom. He watched Andrew arch his back, small body rising to be touched by his calloused hands that reached for him time and time again. 

And then it changed to a scene that could be considered normal to anyone that wasn’t Matt. 

Andrew was smiling cheekily at him, his eyes alight and challenging as he laid, fully dressed, in silence. 

The look was regular, balanced, calculated. Normal. But in the dark, it was the total opposite. 

It was a youthful gaze upon Matt’s deceptively ordinary face. Andrew’s eyebrows were raised in amusement, his lips were curved upwards in a sarcastic grin, his cheekbones were shadowed by the streaming sunlight… He was heavenly, but that was a word used only because Matt would like to break it into pieces. There was something so sadistic there, in the obsidian night, in his head… 

Matt was not religious, but his home was. The walls he laid within were. He was sure they were disgusted with him, repulsed by his utter need to ravage the inconspicuous being of his cousin. Matt found that it made it so much better, it drove him closer to that shaking close he craved. In present time, away from the soft palmed brush of his fantasies, his body trembled and his heart pounded. He took a gasping breath as his body bowed inwards, quivering in the open mouth of impulse. 

Andrew’s name left his mouth in a quiet, praising chant. Matt whimpered, submitting to the overwhelming pulse and pleasure washing over him. He had never hated Andrew so much, even when the word ‘love’ slipped past his chapped lips, colliding with the stark darkness and refusing to lie as it melted into puddles of truth on his sheets. He panted, experiencing grief and chest pains. It was thunderous feeling within him, one that blended into the slowing beat of his heart and eased him.

The aftershocks were electric and unforgiving, like wills from God himself. He did not feel bad. Only numb, having escaped the grasp of boredom to crawl into the long nailed grip of humiliation and need. He beat agitation to the punch by pulling a white flag and giving up. Sleep blanketed him before guilt could, but nothing shielded him from the nightmares that told him he was a criminal in an innocent man’s clothes. He hadn’t committed any crime, but within a critical head, he would serve his time. 

End.


End file.
